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1.5.13-Kingedmundsroyalmurder
Brick!club chapter 13 So in this chapter we get more Javert, which is always fun, and also the first Javert/Valjean showdown, which is awesome, and Fantine’s delirious rambling monologues, which are very much not fun at all. Javert takes Fantine to the police station and closes the door firmly to keep out the curious villagers, which is good of him. The police station is also heated, which is a huge relief. (It really is. I seem to be currently stuck on ‘Fantine must be freezing' mode, so knowing that she's in a heated building is really nice. Though she's probably shivering properly now, since wandering around in a low-cut silk dress in the snow probably sent her into 'too cold to shiver' territory. How does she not have hypothermia again?) I really like Javert’s meditation about his own power here. I also like how much it parallels Valjean’s prison thought process and also serves as a contrast. Valjean, who had no power, judged and condemned society in the name of the individual. Javert, who does have power, judges and condemns an individual in the name of society. I’m not going to look back and see if the word choice and sentence structure also mirror each other, but my vague recollection is that they do, at least in the ‘il jugeait et il condamnait’ part. "Il venait de voir, là dans la rue, la société, représentée par un propriétaire-électeur, insultée et attaquée par une créature en dehors de tout." (He had just seen, there in the street, society, represented by an elector with property, insulted and attacked by a creature outside of it all.) That. That right there is the core of Javert’s character in my opinion. That is Javert looking at Fantine and seeing where he came from and what he could have been and what he can never quite escape and condemning it. That is Javert prioritizing the society that will never have him. That is why I don’t judge him for his actions here. He is working from this extremely rigid dichotomy where the privileged group (those inside of society) automatically win over the unprivileged (those outside of it) no matter what actually happened. I’m not saying that he’s right in thinking this, but he’s condemning himself as much as he is Fantine and I can’t hate him for it. Anyway, then we get Fantine’s first monologue. And you can just see her desperation, see her trying every angle in an attempt to get him to change his mind. You can also see her condemning herself even more than he did but trying desperately to get out of the punishment anyway by promising to do better. (And then Hugo has to ruin the moment by having the suffering make her beautiful. Which is probably a version of the sublime, but breaks me out of the narrative by annoying me.) So apparently Valjean was there the whole time. How did Javert fail to notice him? Normally appearing places unseen is Javert's superpower, not Valjean's, and Javert is normally hyper aware of the mayor. Apparently he was distracted by Fantine's rambling desperation. "Elle se dressa debout tout d’une pièce comme un spectre qui sort de terre" (She stood straight all at once like a spectre rising from the earth). I love this image, particularly since I assume she’s fairly emaciated at this point from being sick and starving. She’s also apparently surprisingly strong, what with managing to knock down a grown man and now pushing away two soldiers. And then Valjean orders Fantine released even after she spits on him and Javert shuts down. (Actually in my notes I wrote, “this lawman has performed an illegal operation and will be forced to shut down” because I think referencing things a decade out of date is fun.) But seriously, he literally seems to stop functioning there as his brain just fails to process what’s going on. (And now I want an android!Javert AU who literally cannot process any of this because it goes against his programming.) Fantine’s second monologue is no less heartbreaking than the first, and in this one you can just see how she’s not quite able to grasp reality at this point. Part of it’s just the power of denial — she too cannot make ‘Madeleine is being nice’ compute in her brain so she convinces herself that it was Javert because that would make sense. But the fact that she’s sick and in shock and probably suffering from hypothermia makes it all that much easier to deny the reality of what’s happening and replace it with something that makes sense. She’s also developed quite a backbone, at least verbally. Does she just not care anymore and so insult the mayor with impunity? Because she’s downright vicious here in places. Also, she calls Madeleine ‘tu,’ presumably as a sign of disrespect. I can’t quite tell if she’s degrading herself so much here because she truly believes it or because she knows Javert believes it and wants to let him know that she’s on his side. Either way, she is staggeringly harsh on herself in terms of future standards of behavior. She’s assuming that everyone is entitled to basically do whatever they want to her and she has no right to be angry or defend herself due to her profession and position in life. I will point out that no one actually disabuses her of this notion, including Valjean, whose method of comfort here seems to be to throw money and the promise of money at her until she feels better and also tell her that it’s okay, she’s not like those other women actually. But we’ll get to that. My point here is that she is condemning herself (and her fellow women) here and no one is stopping her. Javert must really be out of it, to let himself be manhandled by her like that. Plus he flat out forgot that the mayor was in the room. I kind of want to give him a hug and tell him that things will be okay, but they won’t be and he wouldn’t let me anyway probably. "Avait-il fini par se déclarer à lui-même qu’il était impossible qu’une «autorité» eût donné un pareil ordre, et que bien certainement monsieur le maire avait dû dire sans le vouloir une chose pour une autre?" (Had he finished by declaring to himself that it was impossible for an "authority" to have given such an order, and that certainly m. the mayor had unwittingly said one thing and meant another?) Javert too is way up the river of denial/cannot compute here. I’d love to see some meta at some point about this part of him, because before now he’s been portrayed as fairly down to earth and logical, if fanatic and rigid. But if he sometimes has problems with dissociating from reality that would just increase his reasons for clinging to the law as hard as he does. The law is concrete and does not change. It’s a constant and he desperately needs one. And seeing Madeleine casually disregard it like that violates all his principle and subverts his defense mechanisms and he can’t cope. His plea to the mayor seems almost desperate, what with the trembling and the lowered gaze and the randomly blue lips. Hell, he’s even said to have a desperate look. (Also, sidenote, in the French he talks about bourgeois rather than citizens.) So then there’s the final argument between the two of them, where Valjean shuts him down about four times and finally orders him out. Javert doesn’t really try to stick up for himself, just keeps repeating, “But…!” and I actually feel quite sorry for him. Because, like I said, he literally does not know how to cope and Valjean isn’t exactly making it easy for him. (And given that the code he quotes says that he is the arbiter of justice in this case, the argument he’s making is basically, “because I said so.”) And then angel imagery and more light and the hatred melts from Fantine’s heart and I’m going to chalk this whole bit up to fever just like I did when it was happening to Valjean. (Does hatred just melt from people like that, by the way? I can see hatred for one person, but all of it? Fantine has legitimate reasons to hate everything, after all. Is it more of her self-condemnation at work saying that she’s not allowed to hate anything because she deserves it?) Valjean’s speech here is almost funny because he’s basically doing the verbal equivalent of that gif where someone awkwardly pats a crying person with a broom in an attempt at comfort. He’s just kind of wordvomitting at her and promising her all sorts of things in an attempt to find the one that will make her feel better and trying desperately to make it seem like she can make her own choices. “I’ll give you money! And your child! And she can come to you! Or you can go to her! And you can live here! Or in Paris! Whatever you want! Did I mention that I would give you money? Just please stop crying!” And then he tells her that she has never stopped being virtuous which, okay, great, but what about all the other women in her situation? Have they never stopped being virtuous? Isn’t it becoming clear that this insistence on virtue is kind of ridiculous? Are my 21st century morals coming through strongly enough yet? And then Fantine also shuts down and continues her streak of grabbing the hands of men without them being able to stop her and then faints. Commentary Pilferingapples Reblogging for mental image of Valjean attempting to comfort people by patting them with brooms, because YES PERFECT. :P